


For the Soul

by kali_asleep



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort fic, Fluff, Gift, Keith is ridiculous so, M/M, Sick Fic, Some Swearing, everyone thinks Keith is ridiculous, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9072664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/pseuds/kali_asleep
Summary: Her eyes are glued to the glowing screen in front of her as she, with surgical precision, cuts straight to the muscle of the matter: “I'm a scientist, not a love life counselor. Tell Lance to quit being a baby and drag his congested ass to a healing pod.”Lance is sick. Keith isn't sure how to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhapsodyinpink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhapsodyinpink/gifts).



> Merry (late) Christmas! This was originally conceived as a gift for my dear friend Priya when her mom was feeling poorly, and has now morphed into a late Christmas present. I hope you all enjoy!  
> [Unedited, thrown into the wind]

“Hey. So... Say someone was sick and not feeling well and stuff. What would you do to make them feel better?”

Pidge doesn’t even look up from her work; her fingers, flying across the keyboard, don’t even pause as she says, “End their suffering and leave them behind. There’s no place for the weak in this cruel new universe.”

In retrospect, maybe coming to Pidge first wasn’t the best idea. But it’s late, and she’s the only one he’s sure is awake, and frankly, he’s clueless. Keith crosses his arms over his chest to cover his uncertainty. If he’s lucky, Pidge will come around to a real answer soon enough. Unusual as she was, and had always been, Keith was _pretty_ sure she’d had one of those mythical nuclear families back on Earth: father, mother, brother, dog, two-storey house, white picket fence. Which means that, at some point, she’d gotten sick, and someone had been around to take care of her. 

The silence between them stretches the boundaries of amicable and toes into the uncomfortable. Under most other circumstances, he wouldn't mind just hanging out in the lab with Pidge. His patience (or lack thereof) kept him from spending time there as often as Hunk or Shiro, but he found his way with little trouble when he needed a break from all of the more… sociable members of Team Voltron. If Keith had to pick one thing he liked most about Pidge, it was her ability to get things done without idle chitchat.

But tonight, he finds himself wishing Pidge were more of a people person. 

Keith unfolds his arms and leans up against one of the unused system hubs. The metallic ping of his nails tapping against the hub punctuates the silence. After a long enough lapse, she must decide to take pity on him - that, or she finally remembers that he's still there. 

“Oh,” she pipes up. “You weren't asking that as a hypothetical, even though you phrased it as one. You want a real answer.”

“Yeah, keep up genius,” he sighs, as if he hadn’t been the one shifting from foot to foot and waiting, cow-like, for her to pick up on a response he never gave.

Her eyes are glued to the glowing screen in front of her as she, with surgical precision, cuts straight to the muscle of the matter: “I'm a scientist, not a love life counselor. Tell Lance to quit being a baby and drag his congested ass to a healing pod.”

It’s fortunate that he'd gotten used to Pidge picking up a conversation four steps ahead of where it left off. Otherwise, he'd be blindsided by her sudden mention of his sniffling, achey, nose-trumpeting boyfriend. Not like it took a brainiac to figure out which sick person Keith was referring to on a ship with a total body count of seven. He probably shouldn’t have tried to be quite so subtle about it. 

“Trust me, I tried,” Keith says, the shade of a scowl touching his lips, “but he insisted that it was nothing more than a cold, and that he didn’t need to spend time in a pod.”

Rolling her eyes, Pidge reaches out with one hand and drags some piece of information off of her computer screen and displays it on the projector that hovers above. Her other hand continues to rattle across the keyboard. The hologram she projects is, for once, something Keith recognizes - a map of the system they were flying through. 

“Lance is an idiot. We’re ages away from any planet carrying a viral strain that would give a human a cold. I hate to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure he has space cancer.”

His body reacts faster than his brain: his stomach drops, and a frightened tension grips at his lungs and scrapes across his skin. The thought that Lance might- 

But then Keith remembers who he’s talking to. Pidge’s poker face is still impeccable as he narrows his eyes at her and puts his hands on his hips. 

“Space cancer? That’s the best you’ve got?”

Her straight face cracks into a grin. With a flourish, she saves whatever she was working on, then spins around in her chair to face him. It must have been hours since she looked away from the screen, given the way she blinks hard a couple times before rubbing at her eyes. 

“Admittedly not my finest, but I didn’t have much to work with,” she says. “In all seriousness though, if Lance refuses to go use a pod, then he deserves to suffer through feeling disgusting.”

It’s not that he doesn’t disagree. Lance could be senselessly obstinate about almost anything when he put his mind to it. But when Lance had shuffled into Keith’s room bundled in blankets and curled up on his bed with a piteous whimper, the need to _fix it_ , to make things better, had taken hold of Keith like a spark to kindling. 

“While you’re not wrong,” he says, sighing, “you’ve got to throw me a bone here. What would your mom or whoever do when you got sick? I’ve met your dad, I know you didn't actually grow up in a computer simulation.”

“If only,” Pidge murmurs, tone wistful. On more than once occasion, the present included, Keith found himself wondering how he had spent most of his formative years on his on his own in a shack in the desert, yet Pidge turned out to be the strange one. Not like any of them on board were particularly well-adjusted, which was no doubt how they all ended up there in the first place.

“My mom or whoever would force me to stay in bed and do boring stuff like sleep the moment she figured out I was sick, which, as I'm sure you can guess, I didn't have time for,” Pidge says. Keith can’t help but snort - he’d seen Shiro try to put her down to bed after three days without sleep (they were none-the-wiser until she started talking to Coran when he wasn’t in the room). It had been entertaining to watch, and had ended in matching black eyes for Hunk and Shiro when she’d nailed them both with her flailing feet on accident. If it had taken two grown men to get her to rest, he can picture what a nightmare it must have been for her family.

“Once I got older,” she continues, “I’d do anything I could to try and hide that I didn’t feel good. As soon as I started feeling it coming on, I'd dose myself with cold medicine and caffeine, and no one was the wiser, as long as I could manage to hide it from Matt. Though sometimes I'd forget to take it when I was supposed to, and would double up when I did remember. The results were… interesting.” She pauses mid-ramble, pressing a single slim finger to her chin. “Once when I was sick, I tried researching bird flu and ended up hacking the United Council’s data server. Time got a little warpy. I think I almost got elected to be ambassador to a small country in the Southern Sector, but then I passed out.”

“And here I thought you were living on the edge going through the Garrison under a false identity. It's lucky you made it past 15.”

“It’s a gift,” she says with a shrug. 

It’s not the right solution for Lance though. While medicine might help, Keith’s still not sure how the Altean equivalents work, or even where they’re stored, and there’s no way in hell he’d mix it with any form of caffeine. He didn’t think giving his sick boyfriend a heart attack was an appropriate cure for the common cold.

“Well, Lance has no problem with the sleeping thing, and I don’t feel like sending him on a cold medicine induced trip through time and space, so I’m going to need something else.”

To Pidge’s credit, she tries hard to stifle her look of exasperation. He can see her fingers twitching on the arms of her chair, no doubt ready to get back to work, but she still stays focused on him. Maybe Hunk and Shiro were having a positive impact on her after all. 

“Look, I love Lance as much as everyone else does, except you, I guess, but this is really a Hunk question.”

“I know,” he says, “but Hunk’s already asleep. You two spend all of your time together. Can't you just… try and say what Hunk would say?”

He doesn’t try and temper the edge of desperation in his voice. Pidge picks up on it, and must decide to take some mercy on him. She puffs up a bit, puts on an easy smile, and, in her best Hunk voice, says, “Oh, yeah buddy, the only solution is a home cooked meal. Soup, or tea, or some other warm flavor water.”

Of course. Wasn’t that a thing? Some warm, maternal figure bending over a sickbed with chicken noodle soup and a box of tissues? While Keith had never met Lance’s mother, from Lance’s descriptions, he’s sure that’s what she would be doing now.

“What? I thought that was a great impression,” Pidge complains. Keith’s focus snaps back to the here and now, and he grins.

“Real convincing, it was like he was standing right here.”

She waves him away. “Fuck off and go take care of Lance.”

“Thanks,” he says, putting as much of his earnest appreciation into the word as was possible. “That really did help.”

She’s started turning back to her computer, so he only spots her smile in profile.

“I know. Good luck in the kitchen!”

He cringes.

...

The last time Keith had been down to the ship’s kitchen, he’d been shooed away by Coran under threat of death. The time before that, _someone_ (Lance) had suggested they all take turns cooking, and Keith’s product (even he would admit it couldn't reasonably be called _food_ ) had left the rest the team bed-and-bathroom ridden for three days. Orphaned most of his life and in the desert or space for most of the rest, Keith hadn't exactly had time to develop his cooking abilities. 

For better or for worse, there is no one in the kitchen to shove him out the door this time. All sleek metal and silence, the kitchen looks just as much like an operating room to Keith as it does to make a warm, space-home-cooked meal. The prep station stretches well over four meters down the center of the room, equipped for producing meals for hundreds. His desire for a single cup of soup seems vastly under scale. Keith tugs at the bottom of his jacket and straightens his shoulders. No need to feel intimidated. It's just a stupid kitchen, after all. 

He marches over to the wall where he's seen Hunk and Coran pull out ingredients. Three panels, side-by-side, stretch up a bit over his head. Without hesitation, he places his hand on the leftmost panel. It slides up with a soft whirring sound, revealing shelf after shelf of jars and metal canisters and stoppered bottles. Everything is labeled in Altean. It’s not like he can’t read it, but he’d like to have some semblance of soup made before morning rolls around or he dies of the headache reading it will bring him. 

“The things I do for you,” he mutters. 

Reaching up to the shelf just above eye level, Keith sweeps everything off of it and into his arms in one go. The loud clinking of glass and metal accompanies him back to the center island. Once there, he dumps his armload of alien seasonings on the counter and eyes what he’s gathered. One tall, skinny jar contains some kind of unsettling looking spice that reminds Keith of a thick, hardened nostril hair. He pries it open and gives it a tentative sniff. Acrid, a bit peppery, but not all that horrible. With a nod, Keith puts it to his right. It doesn’t take long for him to sort through each container, and by the end of it, he has an assortment of things he think could possibly go into a soup and might not even kill Lance.

Satisfied, he goes back over to the panels and opens the next one. Cool air rushes over her bare arms as it slides open. Navigating the refrigerator was an easier task - he’d seen the violet veined patties Hunk used in their dishes enough times for him to find it with little trouble. Thick, and mushroom-like in texture, whether the patties were meat or not was still a mystery to Keith, but they tasted enough like chicken that he didn’t think Lance would mind. He grabs a bottle filled with a brownish liquid and a few different foods he’s pretty sure could be categorized as vegetables, and adds them to his supplies on the counter. He could do this. Easy.

And it is easy, at first. He grabs the closest thing he can find to a pot and begins filling it with water. Once full, it goes on the section of the counter he knows is a dedicated cooking surface. The buttons to activate it and control the temperature are indecipherable for him, so he pokes around at them until he feels heat starting to rise up. The makeshift pot goes on, and half of the liquid in the bottle goes in. It hisses as it makes contact with the water and fills the air with the putrid scent of overripe squash. He wrinkles his nose.

“That’ll cook off,” he reassures himself. 

The next part of the process he is more than well equipped to handle. He pulls his ever-present knife from the sheath on his belt, wipes it on his shirt to remove any new dirt or grime, and gets to cutting. After a couple hundred ticks, each of the ingredients is stacked in its own, neat pile. Sure, the intended thin slices were more like chunks, and kind of lopsided, but it didn’t matter. They were all going to the same place, and Lance didn’t have the luxury of being picky about his food’s appearance.

Things are going better than expected up until the moment he starts adding ingredients. The weird nose-hair spice grows four times in original size the moment it hits the heat, but remains stiff and impossible to stir. The broth comes to a boil, and then starts producing viscous clouds of yellow steam. The chunks of vegetables look eerily as if they were slithering along the bottom of the pot of their own accord. 

Before he can react, the contents of the pot seem to rise as one, and the whole thing starts boiling over. Keith stabs at the buttons on the cook surface, but he can’t tell if he’s turning down the heat or not. He fiddles with the controls with one hand, and keeps trying to stir the soup with the other, but he’s fighting a losing battle. 

“Shit!”

Keith gives up on adjusting the temperature, instead wrapping a hand around the edge of the pot to pull it off the heat. But of course it’s _hot_ , a problem that Keith doesn’t consider until the pain crackles up his arm like poorly contained lightning.

“Shit!” he yowls again. He rushes over to the sink and sticks his hand under the faucet. A thin strip of skin along his palm has started to blister, it's sting more of an annoyance than an actual hindrance now that he has it under running water. From behind him, he hears the sound of liquid steaming and boiling over once more - he’d let go before pulling the put the entire way off of the burner. Cursing under his breath, Keith sticks his leg out across the space and tries kicking at the pot to shift it from the heat. He’s stretched between the two counters, hand still cooling under the water and balancing on one foot while the other keeps aiming for and missing the pot, when Hunk walks in.

They lock eyes from across the kitchen. It takes a tick or two for Hunk’s words to catch up with his disbelief.

“Hey, Keith.”

“Hey, Hunk.”

“And, uh… what exactly are you doing there buddy?”

With his awkward positioning, failed soup still escaping its containment, and black hair plastered to his neck and forehead, Keith feels all the mess he must look. 

“My best,” he says, voice even. 

“Oh-kay…”

“A little help?” He gestures to the pot with his foot.

“Oh, yeah, sure!” 

Hunk bustles over, the loose ties of his butter-yellow robe trailing behind him. With enviable ease, he dials something in on the cooking surface’s controls and turns off the heat. From some hidden compartment Keith had no idea existed, Hunk pulls out a an oven mitt, and carefully moves the soup pot onto the counter. 

Keith relaxes, letting his foot drop, and withdraws his hand from the water. He looks forlornly at his all but ruined soup attempt.

“Thanks,” he breathes.

“Yeah man, sure thing.” Hunk leans over and gives the soup a long look. His brow furrows and his nose wrinkles, an expression Keith reads as being the midway point between disgusted and wary. He backs away like it might leap up and bite him, and then crosses over to the pantry panels. 

“I'm surprised Coran let you back in the kitchen,” Hunk says as he begins pulling food from the second and third storage sections.

“He doesn't know I'm down here,” Keith admits.  
He goes over to examine what's left of his cooking attempts. A groan rises up from the very core of his being. Keith has successfully created brown sludge. Even if it were edible - which he doubts - there's no way Lance would touch it. 

“Probably best to keep it that way,” Hunk says. He finishes fishing around in the pantries, and brings what he’s gathered over to the counter on the opposite side of Keith. His hands seem to work of their own accord as he prepares himself a snack and continues talking. “Not gonna lie though, you’re like, the very last person in the universe I'd expect to see down here. In descending order of likelihood I think it'd be like… Zarkon, Pidge, my Mom, Iverson, then you.” 

“That's a vote of confidence if I've ever heard one.”

Hunk just shrugs, unapologetic. “You really suck in the kitchen”

Keith’s shoulders slump, and he lets out a long exhale. What had he been thinking, coming down here and trying to cook? 

“You're trying to cook for Lance, aren't you?” 

“Is it that obvious?”

“Pretty much. He brings out this weird sappy streak in you. It'd be kinda gross if it wasn't so cute.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Keith puts on his heaviest scowl.

“I don't get sappy over Lance,” he says. “I'm just being practical. He's an integral part of the team, and we can't form Voltron with him down and out like this. The sooner he gets better, the sooner we can get back to work.”

Hunk’s one-hundred percent right, and they both know it. Going down to the kitchens, a place he'd never felt comfortable, in the middle of the night to attempt to make a warm meal for his sick boyfriend was not the decision of a man rooted in rational thought. Something about Lance’s weak, shaky coughs from under the nest he'd made in Keith’s bed had shorted a circuit to Keith’s brain and rerouted all that sense straight to his heart. Hunk arches an eyebrow.

“Wouldn't the practical decision just have been to shove him in a healing pod?”

“That's what Pidge said,” Keith grumbles, looking away. He’s totally about to get called out.

“Oh Crow, you even went to _Pidge_ for advice?” 

Hunk puts the finishing touches on the sandwich he was composing, and unleashes his widest grin. It's hard not to squirm under his look of knowing delight. Keith’s muttered words are almost inaudible, even in the quiet kitchen.

“I would have gone to you but I thought you'd be asleep.”

“Giant. Sappy. Streak.”

Rather than respond, Keith just heaves the loudest, most disgusted sigh he can muster and sets himself to scraping out the fetid mush of what he’d once hoped would be a passable soup. Not all of the ingredients had gone in before things had started going awry, and it wouldn't take that long for him to get a new batch of soup started again. But Keith could already tell the results would be the exact same, if not worse. Giving up wasn't an option though, especially now that both Pidge and Hunk knew what he was up to. They would tease him about tonight regardless - he may as well have them ragging on him about a success. 

“Well, good luck buddy. Try not to burn anything down,” Hunk says as he picks up his plate and turns to the door.

“Help me,” Keith blurts out, and then, because it’s not Pidge or Lance, but Hunk, “Please?”

Having been friends at the Garrison, Hunk must know how vital Lance’s family is to him, has heard how much he talks about his sisters and brothers, understands his closeness to his mother and father. Hunk doesn't need to know about the damp circles Lance leaves on Keith’s pillow when he whispers of how his mother used to laughingly scold him for destroying the living room to make the 'raddest pillow fort’ his siblings had ever seen. It's been Keith that Lance has come to these past months, when the ever-present vastness of space gets to be too much. Keith alone has seen Lance slip through his bedroom door, arms wrapped around his waist as if he could keep himself together through will alone, only to come apart the moment the door shut. These aren’t Keith’s secrets to share, but he needs Hunk to get how important this is, to the both of them. It’s enough that Hunk understands how much Lance craves the simple comforts of home, sick or otherwise. Keith sets both hands on the counter and leads towards Hunk, expression one of fierce pleading.

Hunk looks forlornly from his snack, to the clock - past midnight, Earth time - and sighs. Keith can tell it’s all show, though, by the little smile that crinkles the corners of Hunk’s mouth. Keith may have had a sappy streak, but Hunk was a sappy to the core.

“Fine, but you owe me one.”

“I'll let Lance beat me on the training deck once he gets better,” Keith promises.

Erupting into laughter, Hunk doubles over, almost spilling his snack. It takes him a few gasping breaths to get back under control - Keith thinks he spots the glimmer of years at the edge of his eyes. 

“He is the literal worst when he loses to you,” Hunk says, chuckles still bubbling up between words. “You really have Lance nailed down. We’ve got a deal! Now, let’s get cooking.”

Pidge was right - this whole thing really was Hunk’s realm of expertise. He guides Keith through the steps of starting the soup with gentle intensity, as serious about perfecting the dish as Keith is about helping Lance. Hunk does most of the talking, describing his first failed experience with the nosehair spice, and recounting how Pidge had managed once to set the goo dispenser on fire trying to get the goo to taste like pizza. The soup takes less than twenty minutes from start to finish with Hunk’s instructing. 

“It's not the worst,” Hunk declares after sipping a spoonful. “Knowing Lance, he’ll like it.”

It's as good of a stamp of approval on food as Keith ever expects to get. 

…

From the faint light that flickers under his door as he approaches, Keith guesses that Lance must have woken up. His stomach does a little flop of excitement, knowing he won't have to wait for Lance to try the soup. The door slides open.

Space has, of all things, made Keith soft. A lifetime without home or family toughened a sense of self-preservation in him that had been broken for the first time in years when he determined that Shiro was still alive, and was returning to Earth. Since then, he’s felt the crust of distrust chip away with each mission, each forming of Voltron, each moment that hits him with the stunning truth that he has found his place in the universe. And no one has done more to make him understand the meaning of home than the man draped in layers of blankets watching an alien game show broadcast on Keith’s holoscreen. Lance turns with the sound of the door, and shoots him a smile.

“So there you are. I’d just assumed you'd left me here for dead.” His voice is more creak than its usual croon, with a nasal muteness to it.

“I tried,” Keith deadpans, “but I realized you're probably petty enough to haunt me an eternity if I did.”

Lance's giggling turns to wheezing coughs in a matter of seconds. Concern grips at Keith’s chest, but all he can do is sit down next to Lance and wait for it to pass. Once the hacking subsides, Keith passes Lance one of the bowls of soup in his hands.

“What's this?” Lance croaks.

“Soup, obviously.”

He watches as Lance’s blue eyes scan the the soup with intent. It's captivating, the slow flutter of Lance's long lashes as he blinks. 

“Did you make this? Is it going to kill me?”

The detritus of sleep clings to one corner of Lance’s eye. Keith reaches up and sweeps it away with a gentle thumb. He lays his palm on Lance’s cheek, the skin still too warm for Keith’s liking. Cat-like, Lance presses into the touch.

“Yes I did, and of course not,” Keith says, rolling his eyes. “I already told you I don't want your ghost following me around everywhere.”

To prove his point, Keith swallows a spoonful of soup from his own bowl. The sour flavor is a hair stronger now that it's cooled some, but it’s on the whole not disgusting.

“Quit being a baby and try some,” he says.

Lance sticks his tongue out at him, but nonetheless scoops up some soup. His mouth puckers as he downs his first bite, but after a moment, he hums out a contented sound.

“This… doesn't completely suck,” Lance concedes. “Was Hunk up?”

Being careful not to tip any bowls, Keith bumps Lance’s shoulder with his own. 

“Rude. Is this really the thanks I get for being nice?”

He feels the weight of Lance’s head drop onto his shoulder. 

“No,” he says in a quiet voice, “this is.”

Lance presses his lips to Keith’s neck. They're chapped from fever and too much blowing of his nose, but the sensation still sends heat coursing straight down to his toes. Keith sets his bowl out of the way on the floor, and wraps an arm around Lance’s waist. They sit, indulgent in the quiet that comes when they're together more often than the other paladins might predict. Lance sips at his soup, murmuring little thanks and dotting Keith’s neck and cheek with appreciative kisses in between bites. He clears his throat before he speaks again.

“You're a soup-er boyfriend.”

Groaning, Keith pushes Lance off his shoulder. Lance balks, sets his soup aside, and launches himself at Keith. It doesn't take him by any sort of surprise, but Keith allows Lance to flip the both down onto the pillows. 

“I knew you were faking it!” Keith exclaims, making a weak attempt at fending off Lance’s barrage of kisses aimed everywhere but his lips.

“Keep that up,” Lance says, grinning, “and I'll sneeze in your mouth.”

Keith covers Lance’s face with a hand, trying to push his head to the other side. “You’re so gross!”

“You're gross,” Lance shoots back, sounding squelched. 

The lazy playfight continues until wracking coughs overtake Lance’s frame, and he collapses on Keith’s chest. 

“If I get sick, you’re responsible for dragging my body to a healing pod,” Keith grumbles. There's no real threat in his voice, and Lance chuckles.

“I've been trying to be considerate, but I guess if that's not enough, I’ll just go.”

Rather than go, Lance rolls off of Keith and flips on his side, back facing him. Keith shakes his head the best he can on the pillow, and turns over to put an arm over Lance. 

“Stay,” Keith says, “I made all that soup just for you. Besides, no one else wants to deal with your contagion.”

They huddle up together in the small bed. Lance’s body churns out an uncomfortable amount warmth, but Keith doesn't pull away. It’s not long until Lance’s breathing grows slow with sleeps. A high whine whistles from Lance’s stuffy nose as he exhales. Keith buries his face into Lance’s back. If he gets sick, he gets sick.


End file.
